The term “Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation” (aka AMO) has been used to define the variation of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean. What did I mean in class when I said “it might not be real?” There is no doubt that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean varies, and as we take and accumulate measurements we identify extended times when the ocean is warmer or cooler than average. When these data are plotted, we see these warmer and cooler time spans persist for a few tens of years; hence, a multi-decadal oscillation. The plot below is taken from a good article in Wikipedia, and the plot was made from data that is available at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory.

Figure 1: An area index that measures how much warmer or cooler the North Atlantic Ocean is from a long-term average (from Wikipedia). (The indices for the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation are not especially well documented in the web resources that even a reasonably informed practitioner can find. The indices tend to be averages of the Atlantic surface temperatures from somewhere in the deep tropics to Greenland. They are then subtracted from long-term means. The 20th century mean is used in some papers. This example demonstrates some of foibles of data, data documentation, and data presentation on the web.)

I want to revisit this figure that I use as a template to think about the natural science of the Earth’s climate.

Figure 2: A summary figure I use to organize the basics of climate science and global warming.

A focus on the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is most naturally categorized in Figure 2 as “internal variability.” When we talk about global warming in the past 100 years and the next 100 years, internal variability usually refers to states of the atmosphere and ocean that are persistent for some amount of time – weeks, months, years, decades. For example, in El Nino the temperature of the ocean in tropical eastern Pacific is warm and stays warm for a few months or more. Then in La NIna the eastern Pacific is cool and stays cool for a few months or more. There is an easy feeling of the Earth oscillating back and forth between the warm and cool times in the eastern Pacific Ocean. For El Nino and La Nina, there are many related changes in atmospheric circulation (the trade winds change) and precipitation (tropical convention moves east and west). All of these related changes fit together, and they describe the atmospheric and ocean behaving as a coherent system. This coherent behavior allows us to understand cause and effect; it allows the possibility for prediction.

On a scale of a million years, the cycles between the ice ages and temperate times might be internal variability. This would be related to, for example, carbon dioxide coming into and out of the ocean due to changes in temperature and biology. So far, I have been diligent not to call internal variability “natural variability.” El Nino and La Nina are “natural,” but that does not mean that their behavior will remain the same as the climate warms. To call internal variability “natural” suggests this idea of a “natural” and a “manmade” climate that are two different things, and this idea is clearly not the case. We have our climate, there is internal variability, there is manmade warming, and they all occur together, and they will change together.

The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is internal variability. When I stand in front of class and say the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation might not be real, I mean several things. At the foundation of my statement is that we don’t have this story of coherent behavior like we have in El Nino and La Nina; we don’t have a construction of the atmosphere and ocean behaving as a connected, dynamic system. In fact, I would argue that the issues I raise in the caption of Figure 1, for example mushy definitions of indices, indicate the challenges of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. We know there is a signal, but it is even hard to describe that signal very well. When we link back to cause and effect, one of the leading ideas is that it is related to subtle changes of global scale ocean circulation, which we neither model nor observe very well. So I don’t say that the signal of the temperature change is unreal, but I suggest that the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is not a coherent sloshing back and forth between warm and cold.

One reason we are interested in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is that we know that there are strong relationships between the temperature of the ocean in the tropical North Atlantic and drought and flood in North America and Africa. We know that warm Atlantic sea surface temperature is very highly linked to hurricanes in the United States. One of the scientists most quoted as a skeptic of the science of global warming, Bill Gray, bases much of his climate change argument on the role of Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation as a proxy for global climate. (For those who are interested, go back to Forms of Argument, and look at the focus on isolated information and reliance in this case on the reality of a process that is both hard to model and observe. How does this stand up in the face of all that we can observe?)

The point of Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability by Ben Booth and coauthors is that temperature changes associated with different amounts of aerosols at different times can explain the majority of the variability observed in the temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean. Natural sources of aerosols include volcanoes, which cool the Earth’s surface. Other natural sources are salt and soil dust. Manmade aerosols include pollutants, soot, and soil dust. (old Rood blogs - Volcanoes and Long Cycles, and Black Carbon) What aerosols do is to change the absorption and reflection of solar radiation; the absorption and reflection of clouds; and how efficiently heat is held near the Earth’s surface. In the simulations by Booth and others, the predominant impact of aerosols is related to effects on solar radiation – both directly by reflection (volcanoes) and indirectly by changes to clouds. Earlier studies have investigated the effect of volcanoes, and this study brings to the forefront the importance of other sources of aerosols, many of them manmade, in modulating global climate with strong regional influences.

The numerical experiments in Booth et al. (2012) are well designed. But they are complex, and, well, numerical experiments. I hold such numerical experimentation as an important part of scientific methodology of the 21st century. They help us think in a field where our ability to execute controlled experiments is limited. To me, these experiments suggest a strong, well-based explanation of the variability of North Atlantic temperatures. However, scientific method requires more scrutiny, more use of observations, and independent verification of the results. But as it stands right now, we have at hand a plausible explanation of cause and effect that explains the majority of the observed variability.

To finish another long article – The work of Booth et al. (2012) extends back to 1860. The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation extends back, well seemingly, at least 8000 years. In Nature Communications there is an article Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years by Mads Faurschou Knudsen and others (2011). This paper concludes that for most of the time since the last ice age ended, there has been a 50 – 70 year oscillation, which they attribute to atmospheric-oceanic coupled behavior modulated by variations in the orbit of the Earth. As I understand this paper, the authors tested whether or not variations in the Sun could explain their observed variability. Since solar variability did not explain their observations, they accepted the hypothesis that atmospheric-oceanic coupled behavior provided the explanation. They did not investigate the impact of aerosols.

As it stands in my mind today, the variability in the North Atlantic temperature behavior is strongly influenced by aerosols in the atmosphere and a trend due to increasing carbon dioxide. If there is oscillatory behavior in the temperature, it is due to increases and decreases in atmospheric aerosols, perhaps on top of a smaller atmospheric-oceanic dynamic variation that still requires explanation. A good step forward, I think.

Nathan Myhrvold was Microsoft's chief technology guru during the late 1980s and 1990s. He started Microsoft Research in 1991.

Mr. Myhrvold wants 1 million tunnels in the ocean. He's been advocating this for several years.

I'm still skeptical about tunnels. But I thought you would like knowing there are others who share your opinion.

Good golly a Million of them???? We only need about 2500 of them in the deep western boundary currents such as the Gulfstream and Kuroshio currents. He needs to chat with me about them..... I don't want to freeze the planet over with them I just want to restore the Northern Arctic Ice with them to what the levels were during pre-industrial revolution times along with Co2 levels at the same time with them. Y'all with me on that??

Quoting Birthmark:That explains that "F" on my senior thesis, I guess. I knew I should have gone with "The Cultural Relevance of Wile E. Coyote.!"

Ah, well, hindsight is 20/20.

If you want to continue your higher education, without having to use critical thinking or written/oral skills for $6 and a few minutes time you can get an advanced degree in Climate Hoax Analysis from the prestigious Limbaugh Institute for the Advancement of Ignorance.

What can old Texas trees teach us about our climate? One researcher is finding out. Follow Dr. Malcolm Cleaveland from the University of Arkansas as he taps the secrets of the cypress trees and learns the warnings they may hold for water planners. See how tree rings give clues to years of drought and floods.

My wife was born and raised and spent most of her life along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Her family lost their summer home, on Bolivar peninsula, during Hurricane Carla in the 60s. We have both seen the damage and destruction caused several years ago by Hurricane Ike. Town of Gilchrest was effectively destroyed.

While I'm not a native Texan, we did decide to retire in the Hill Country, NW of San Antonio. As I write this, we are currently under a Flash Flood Warning.

Quoting Neapolitan:Like most things from "Prison Planet" and Alex Jones, this type of paranoid gibberish makes no sense when my mind is clear. perhaps I'll get drunk and high this evening and try again.

Any time you read something that tries to link Thomas Malthus, Adolph Hitler and Al Gore in one grand global conspiracy, you know the author has lost all capability of rational, logical thought processes.

My wife was born and raised and spent most of her life along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Her family lost their summer home, on Bolivar peninsula, during Hurricane Carla in the 60s. We have both seen the damage and destruction caused several years ago by Hurricane Ike. Town of Gilchrest was effectively destroyed.

While I'm not a native Texan, we did decide to retire in the Hill Country, NW of San Antonio. As I write this, we are currently under a Flash Flood Warning.

The same secretive organization that admittedly manufactured the global warming threat in 1990 is still pushing the same hoax today, with the Club of Rome issuing an alarmist report predicting a catastrophic rise in temperatures that will decimate the planet.

“Rising carbon dioxide emissions will cause a global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius by 2052 and a 2.8 degree rise by 2080, as governments and markets are unlikely to do enough against climate change, the Club of Rome think tank said,” reports Reuters.

The report, entitled, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, decries improving living standards in developing countries and warns that man-made climate change could eventually kill off humans entirely.

Although the report has generated a deluge of coverage in the establishment media, not one of those news stories points out that the Club of Rome admittedly manufactured the “idea” of man-made global warming back in 1990.

On page 75 of their 1990 publication entitled The First Global Revolution, the organization outlined how they would manufacture ecological scares in order to manipulate the public into accepting the imposition of a dictatorial world government run by them.“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself,” states the report, which can be read in full at the end of this article.The passage appears under a sub headline entitled, “The common enemy of humanity is Man.”

The Club of Rome’s 1972 publication The Limits To Growth was a Malthusian blueprint on how the human population needed to be reduced in order to prevent an ecological collapse, which in itself was merely a disguised version of the abhorrent eugenicist ideas that were circulating in the early part of the 20th century and eventually died out with Hitler. The widely discredited population bomb paranoia of the 70′s and 80′s was gradually replaced by the climate change fearmongering that we see the organization pushing today, which again is merely another regurgitation of the eugenics-obsessed policies of the elite.

Prominent members of the Club of Rome include Al Gore and Maurice Strong, both of whom are intimately involved with privately-owned carbon trading groups, whose multi-million dollar profits are solely reliant on protecting the credibility of the man-made global warming dogma.

“We need a system of governance that takes a more long-term view,” said Norwegian academic Jorgen Randers, the chief author of the latest report. “It is unlikely that governments will pass necessary regulation to force the markets to allocate more money into climate friendly solutions, and must not assume that markets will work for the benefit of humankind.”In other words, Randers is calling for the United Nations to crush the last vestiges of national sovereignty and impose a global carbon tax to line the pockets of scam artists like Al Gore, Maurice Strong and other Club of Rome members who created the hoax in the first place.

Aside from the vested interests, ice core samples continually show how temperature rises precipitate CO2 release. In other words CO2, that evil life-giving gas that trees breathe and humans exhale, is not a primary driver of climate change.Indeed, global warming alarmists are becoming increasingly desperate to see their “system of governance” implemented given the fact that the science is now proving them to be liars and frauds.*********************

Like most things from "Prison Planet" and Alex Jones, this type of paranoid gibberish makes no sense when my mind is clear. perhaps I'll get drunk and high this evening and try again.

I believe that these islands will be less vulnerable than natural barrier islands, which are mostly sand islands that have been created by tidal actions. The boulders should prevent extensive erosion much in the way the a seawall protects low lying areas such as Galveston.

I thought the whole process was quite interesting. I still wonder how it will hold up under a large storm. Even natural barrier islands take their hits.

I believe that these islands will be less vulnerable than natural barrier islands, which are mostly sand islands that have been created by tidal actions. The boulders should prevent extensive erosion much in the way the a seawall protects low lying areas such as Galveston.

Quoting Birthmark:I'm greatly oversimplifying since I'm not a scientist, so anything contained in this post is subject to correction by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. :^D

As I understand the state of things in the Arctic, the ocean is playing some role in the melting. However, air temperature during and albedo change are the primary drivers of the actual melting. Ocean temperature also plays a role, of course, but I don't think that there is enough of a temperature change with negative PDO and AMO to do more than perhaps slow down the melting from beneath the ice.

Again, that's my understanding of the state of the science. It is not the science itself.

Less ice extent means less albedo meaning less light to reflect back out to space which means more dark blue water to absorb more incoming solar radiation in its place which in turn melts more ice. A double whammy occurs in the form of a GHG blanket trapping even more of that solar radiation trying to escape to space and adds to more heating thus melting more ice.

Quoting Birthmark:I'm greatly oversimplifying since I'm not a scientist, so anything contained in this post is subject to correction by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. :^D

As I understand the state of things in the Arctic, the ocean is playing some role in the melting. However, air temperature during and albedo change are the primary drivers of the actual melting. Ocean temperature also plays a role, of course, but I don't think that there is enough of a temperature change with negative PDO and AMO to do more than perhaps slow down the melting from beneath the ice.

Again, that's my understanding of the state of the science. It is not the science itself.

I tend to agree with you on this. The Albedo effect will allow the ocean waters to retain a great deal of heat during the summer months. And that's my non-scientific opinion.

Actually, these islands were created by pumping sand from the floor of the surrounding waters. Boulders were used only for stabilization . This process may have changed the level of a small lake, buy not the open waters of the sea.

Quoting overwash12:Has anyone ever wondered if the man-made islands off the coast of Dubai raised the sea-level any? They dumped an awful lot of boulders in the Ocean!

Actually, these islands were created by pumping sand from the floor of the surrounding waters. Boulders were used only for stabilization . This process may have changed the level of a small lake, buy not the open waters of the sea.

Quoting Birthmark:The answer to all of your questions is "it wouldn't." It probably would slow down the inevitable destruction of the Arctic Ice Cap, but that destruction isn't very likely to fall within your time constraints.

So are you saying that keeping SST's at cooler temperatures than at the beginning of the "Industrial Revolution" will not restore the Northern Arctic Ice Cap extent? Is that because of the current GHG levels that will still warm the atmosphere regardless the amount of cooling you do?

Quoting iceagecoming:The low of 53 degrees early Tuesday morning at Palm Beach International Airport set a record for the date, eclipsing the 55 degree mark in 1998. The temperature bottomed out at 58 degrees on the island (Lake Worth Pier), according to the National Weather Service in Miami.

It was 59 in Fort Lauderdale, 60 in Miami and 59 in Naples. There were some even cooler temperatures in the interior and north including 47 at Palmdale, west of Lake Okeechobee; 46 in Fort Pierce and some low- to mid-40s in eastern Collier County.

The record low on Wednesday is 50 degrees in 2005, and with a forecast low temperature of 57, that will probably remain on the books. The normal high is 83 and the normal low is 67.

Quoting iceagecoming:The low of 53 degrees early Tuesday morning at Palm Beach International Airport set a record for the date, eclipsing the 55 degree mark in 1998. The temperature bottomed out at 58 degrees on the island (Lake Worth Pier), according to the National Weather Service in Miami.

It was 59 in Fort Lauderdale, 60 in Miami and 59 in Naples. There were some even cooler temperatures in the interior and north including 47 at Palmdale, west of Lake Okeechobee; 46 in Fort Pierce and some low- to mid-40s in eastern Collier County.

The record low on Wednesday is 50 degrees in 2005, and with a forecast low temperature of 57, that will probably remain on the books. The normal high is 83 and the normal low is 67.

The low of 53 degrees early Tuesday morning at Palm Beach International Airport set a record for the date, eclipsing the 55 degree mark in 1998. The temperature bottomed out at 58 degrees on the island (Lake Worth Pier), according to the National Weather Service in Miami.

It was 59 in Fort Lauderdale, 60 in Miami and 59 in Naples. There were some even cooler temperatures in the interior and north including 47 at Palmdale, west of Lake Okeechobee; 46 in Fort Pierce and some low- to mid-40s in eastern Collier County.

The record low on Wednesday is 50 degrees in 2005, and with a forecast low temperature of 57, that will probably remain on the books. The normal high is 83 and the normal low is 67.

Simultaneously if we were to keep this PDO graph in the BLUE at -0.5 for lets say 50 years how fast would the Northern Arctic Ice extent return to 1979 levels within that time period along with this AMO graph in the BLUE at -0.1 for lets say 50 years???

Anyone wish to opine on this? Also,would more forcing of cooler waters have a quicker response time?????????

Likewise another question for you people here. If we were to keep this PDO graph in the BLUE at -0.5 for lets say 50 years how fast would the Northern Arctic Ice return to 1979 levels within that time period???